By day, Paul Vigna works as a finance reporter for the Wall Street Journal. By night—and, well, also by day—he’s a huge fan of The Walking Dead, so much so that he writes the WSJ‘s weekly recaps of the AMC hit show in addition to his regular reporting. Over five years of writing recaps, visiting fan conventions and interviewing the show’s stars, Vigna has become arguably one of the most knowledgeable experts on the zombie anomaly that draws about 11 million viewers per episode on average.

Vigna puts his trove of Walking Dead knowledge to work in his new book, Guts: The Anatomy of The Walking Dead (Dey Street Books), the first hardcore fan’s insider guide to the show that’s taken cable by storm. Vigna certainly wades into the guts of the show, dissecting the show’s high and low points along with its astonishing success and rabid fandom.

Parade recently caught up with Vigna to talk all things Walking Dead.

As a finance guy, how did you start recapping TWD?

I was a fan of the show when it first started. I wanted to do a recap because I thought it’d be fun, but there was someone here who was doing it. Then that person left and they needed somebody, so they asked me, and I jumped at it. I’m a sci-fi/fantasy nerd from when I was like 5 in the early ’70s, watching Star Trek reruns in New Jersey. I had no huge ambitions for what it would be—I just thought it’d be fun.

How did writing the recaps change the way you watch the show?

Fans pick apart the show, and that’s part of the reason why recaps are popular to begin with. So [I was] doing some of that anyhow, but it does take away from some of the fun of watching it. Now I will try to watch it once all the way through, not taking any notes, not doing anything but trying to enjoy it like a fan. Then I will go back and take notes, and I watch it three or four times. I’m literally watching it to try to find the seams and look for things that I think are wrong or right. But I still do enjoy it, and what I get out of it is far greater than what I’ve lost.

You’ve gotten to interview a lot of the show’s stars through the recap gig. What’s that like?

These guys are on a completely different plane. I’m really not saying this to make them look better—every single person I’ve talked to who’s involved in that show has come across to me as an extremely genuine, caring, hardworking person.

The people involved really do love the show, and the success has been such an unexpected thing. They’re very fortunate to be in the position they’re in, and [they know] that their character could get killed off at any second, and they don’t know how long they’re gonna be in the job. Interviewing them has always been a very relaxed thing. They’re generally pretty warm, interesting people who are happy to talk to you.

You write about how casually the stars walk among their fans at TWD conventions. Is that openness with fans part of the show’s draw?

Before I’d gone to that convention, the only people I knew who liked the show were my family and friends. But in interviewing the actors, they’d always talk about the “family” of the show. And a lot of the time they’re talking about the cast and crew, and how they treat each other as family even after somebody’s character gets written off.

But seeing the way the actors and the fans interacted with each other, there was a larger sense of family. And I really didn’t get the sense that it was a put-on. The actors, the people involved in the show, genuinely appreciate the fans and see them as the other half of this dynamic. It’s this group of people putting on this production and putting it out into the world, but what makes it valuable is the way people respond to it. It’s this really circular dynamic, and I was really impressed by how much time and effort [the actors] were willing to put in with people.

Why do you think so many people love the show?

Apocalyptic stories are really popular right now because we live in relatively apocalyptic times. The 21st century has been a rolling series of disasters. I think people can understand the show on that level. But the heart of its success is the fact that this is an apocalyptic show that features a bunch of characters who are completely average, completely ordinary and completely look like the people who watch the show.

You’ve taken these very average people and put them into this extraordinary circumstance. In portraying these very average people week after week, showing their struggles, showing what they’ve figured out they need to do in order to survive, what you end up with is a very, very rough template of how you survive difficult times. And I don’t think it’s something the show intended to be about, but because of the times we’re in, that’s what people are taking away from it. It tells you to keep going, to endure no matter what befalls you.

We also get to watch this family group try on different philosophies for how they’ll survive and rebuild.

This show takes society and breaks it down to elemental levels. There are no institutions left, no communities, no cities, no police, no government. It’s up to these survivors to rebuild themselves, to rebuild community, to rebuild society.

The zombies are kind of the stand-in for catastrophe, for whatever you want to say broke society down. On the first couple seasons of the show, it’s just about them running from zombies, but now it’s become something else. They’re not afraid of the zombies now; the zombies are a tool for them. Now it’s about rebuilding society: What does society look like, and what values are you going to put into your society?

The show has such a strong following and the ratings are incredible, but the awards recognition isn’t there. Why is that?

My personal take is that the Emmys are like the in-clique in high school. If the in-crowd likes you, they will shower you with Emmys and affection. And if the in-crowd doesn’t like you, they will ignore you, no matter what your ratings are. Maybe it is that it’s zombies and they think it’s too lowbrow, but Walking Dead is not in that clique and so it gets no recognition. But when you’re doing a show about the end of the world, do you really want the world to accept you? You’re doing a zombie show; you don’t care what polite society thinks.

What’s the worst thing the show has ever done, in your opinion?

It’s easily Glenn in the alley [season six, episode three]. For many reasons, I hate that. The first three episodes of season six are three of the best episodes the show ever put together back to back. It’s absolutely brilliant storytelling, the way it seems so visceral and it’s occurring in real time—it’s all in one afternoon. And by the end of the third episode, I was literally on the edge of my seat. They have Glenn in the alley, it’s a series of decisions that have gone wrong. Even capable people can get trapped by their own good intentions.

It was such brilliant storytelling—it was painful. I loved it. And then it just turns into a cliffhanger, which they don’t need to do. They don’t need gimmicks. They have Glenn escape that alley in the most unrealistic way. They break all the rules they’ve built up over five or six years. There’s no way that the guy is surrounded by a hundred zombies in an alley, and he falls to the ground and he’s covered in zombies, and none of them grab him and he crawls under a dumpster. To this day, it makes no sense. I’m still mad about it.

What do you think of season eight so far?

I’m excited to see where it’s going. You’ve gone from the individual level to a small group of people to actual settlements, and now you have a loose federation of settlements going against another gigantic federation of settlements. You’re really getting to the point where you’re seeing these guys trying to put the world back together, and I think that’s really interesting.